Summary: JUAN J. ALONSO
Juan J. Alonso is an associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics at
Stanford University. He joined the faculty in 1997 shortly after receiving a PhD degree in
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. He is the founder and director
of the Aerospace Design Laboratory (ADL) where he specializes in the development of high-
fidelity computational design methodologies to enable the creation of realizable and efficient
aerospace systems. Prof. Alonso's research involves a large number of different applications
including transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic aircraft, helicopters, turbomachinery, and launch
and re-entry vehicles. He is the author of over 100 technical publications on the topics of
computational design, multi-disciplinary optimization, fundamental numerical methods, and high-
performance parallel computing. During the period spanning August 2006-October 2008, Prof.
Alonso was the Director of the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Program in Washington, DC. In
that position he was responsible for the entire portfolio of aerospace vehicle and vehicle
technology research for the agency in the subsonic rotary wing, subsonic fixed wing, supersonic,
and hypersonic regimes, with particular emphasis on the energy efficiency and sufficiency of the
aviation enterprise and its environmental impact. As Director of the Fundamental Aeronautics
Program, he also oversaw a large number of interactions with academia, industry, and other
government agencies including the FAA, the Department of Defense (USAF, Army, Navy),
Department of Energy, DARPA, and the JPDO. He is also the recipient of several awards and
fellowships including being a three-consecutive-time recipient of the AIAA Best Paper Award in